About the Blog

I will post a new entry every few weeks. Some will be new writing and some will be past work that has relevance today. The writing will deal in some way with the themes that have been part of my teaching and writing life for decades:

•teaching and learning;•educational opportunity;•the importance of public education in a democracy;•definitions of intelligence and the many manifestations of intelligence in school, work, and everyday life; and•the creation of a robust and humane philosophy of education.

If I had to sum up the philosophical thread that runs through my work, it would be this: A deep belief in the ability of the common person, a commitment to educational, occupational, and cultural opportunity to develop that ability, and an affirmation of public institutions and the public sphere as vehicles for nurturing and expressing that ability.

My hope is that this blog will foster an online community that brings people together to continue the discussion.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Here’s an all-too-familiar storyline about reform, from education to agricultural development: The reform has run its course, has not achieved its goals, and the reformers and other analysts speculate in policy briefs or opinion pages about what went wrong. The interesting thing is that the reform’s flaws were usually evident from the beginning. As someone who has lived through several periods of educational reform and has studied schools and taught for a long time, I see characteristics of the current reform movement, as powerful as it is, that could lead to unintended and undesirable consequences. But when reform is going strong it can become a closed ideological system, deaf to the cautionary tale. I have six areas of concern.

Tone Down the Rhetoric. In the manifesto “How to Fix Our Schools” published on October 10 in this newspaper, New York City’s chancellor, Joel Klein and 15 colleagues wrote: “It’s time for all the adults – superintendants, educators, elected officials, labor unions, and parents alike – to start acting like we are responsible for the future of our children.” The collective “we” is used here, but it’s pretty clear rhetorically that the signatories believe that they are already on the side of the angels. Anyone who is not on board with their reforms is acting out of self interest.

This is not the way to foster the unified effort called for in the sentence. Reformers have been masterful at characterizing anyone who differs from their approach as “traditionalists” who want to maintain the status quo, putting their own retrograde professional interests ahead of the good of children. Teachers unions are the arch-villain in this Manichean tale of good and evil, and schools of education are right behind. I’m reminded of the toxic rhetoric of patriotism that characterized the 2008 presidential campaign. So, if I may, in the interest of the children, I suggest a less adversarial language. Many of the people on the receiving end of it have spent a lifetime working for the same goals voiced by the reformers, and the reformers need their expertise.

There is another language issue, and that’s the unrelenting characterization of public schools as failures. To be sure, this crisis rhetoric predates the current reformers, going back to the 1983 document “A Nation at Risk.” Since then, the language of crisis and failure has intensified. Crisis talk can give rise to action, but heard consistently enough and long enough, such rhetoric can also lead to despair and paralysis.

There is a crisis in American education, and it involves mostly poor children, and thus it is a moral as well as educational outrage. But it is just not accurate to characterize public education itself as being in a thirty-year crisis.

I can’t tell you how many professional people I meet who, upon finding out what I do, erupt with damning statements about public schools: they are a catastrophe, we are doomed, the situation is hopeless. What is telling is that they are not speaking from experience; they don’t have kids, or their kids are in private school, or are grown. They are voicing the new common sense. Unless you’re in the free market camp of the reform movement, this reaction is not good news, for it suggests hopelessness and withdrawal from support for public education. The Problem with “Cleaning House.” Some districts are so dysfunctional that clearing them out seems the best option. But the history of reform in education – and other domains as well – reveals the shortsightedness of such action. In even the most beleaguered school district there are good teachers and administrators, and their skills and local wisdom are tossed out in the clean sweep. And in most communities there are grass roots movements to improve the schools, and they are typically ignored. Finally, this approach predictably is going to piss people off, not only those who are part of the problem, but many others in the community as well. No one likes to be pushed around – as the voters in Washington D.C. just demonstrated. Clean sweep reform shakes things up and attracts the media, which might be useful. But these tactics can generate more heat than light. Though it is tedious and calls for great skill, a more targeted and discriminating approach that builds on what is good has a better chance of long-term success. Careful of the Big Idea. Reformers are often driven by a big idea, a grand process or structure that will transform the status quo. Not too long ago, the big idea in education reform was turning large schools into small ones. For NCLB it was a system of high-stakes tests that would drive achievement. One appealing big idea today is charter schools. The problem with the big idea approach to school reform is that large-scale educational problems have more than one cause and thus require more than one solution.

The mother of big ideas in contemporary school reform is the belief that we can capture dynamic phenomena like learning or teaching with a few numerical measures. This is the logical fallacy of reification, and the last century of psychological science is filled with unfortunate examples, as Stephen J. Gould trenchantly observed in The Mismeasure of Man.

Though most reformers acknowledge the problems with NCLB, they continue to try to build a better technocratic mousetrap, not questioning the assumptions behind their use of testing and accountability systems. We’re seeing all this play out with currently popular “value-added” methods of evaluating teachers as reformers ignore the concerns raised by statisticians and measurement experts.

One more manifestation of this way of thinking is the attempt to develop quantitative models of teacher effectiveness. In a nutshell, the approach attempts to pinpoint specific teaching behaviors and qualities and correlate them with a numerical measure of student achievement. There’s another logical problem here, the reductive fallacy –the attempt to explain a complex phenomenon by reducing it to its basic components. Even if researchers are able to specify a wide range of behaviors and qualities, the further problem is that it’s likely, given the history of such attempts, that the result will be a small number of significant correlations with the measure of achievement – which itself might be flawed. We’ll end up with a thin composite of good teaching. We just witnessed with NCLB the way high-stakes testing can narrow what gets taught; a reductive model of teacher effectiveness could lead to a corresponding narrowing of teaching itself. Focus on Instruction. It is characteristic of contemporary school reform to focus on organizational structure and broad testing and accountability systems, but change at that level is a necessary but not sufficient condition for reform. As Debbie Meier, the maven of the original small schools movement, once said: You can have crappy small schools too. What goes on in the classroom makes all the difference.

It could be argued that standardized tests give us a window onto learning, but it is a pretty narrow window, distant from the cognitive give and take of instruction. And it could also be said that aforementioned measures of teacher effectiveness will bring characteristics of good teachers to the fore. Even if they work, these methods won’t help us think about curriculum, the organization of the classroom, what we want students to do intellectually, how we address academic underpreperation, and so on. Instruction is the gigantic missing element in reform, and without it, all the structural changes in the world won’t get us very far.

Privileging Youth Over Experience. Reformers have a tendency to downplay the value of experience and to celebrate the new. You will rarely see a career public school teacher featured in reform media, but will see young teachers in KIPP schools or Teach for America volunteers.

Furthermore, ask yourself, when in a reform document have you found reference to the rich Western tradition of educational thought, from Plato through Horace Mann and W.E.B. DuBois to the twentieth century treasure trove of research on learning. It seems that the reform movement’s managerial-technocratic orientation has an anti-intellectual streak to it.

I greatly admire the young people who sign up for Teach for America or work diligently in schools like KIPP. I began my career in education via an earlier alternative program, Teacher Corps, so I know the exhilaration and challenge. But I also know how green I was, and how the wisdom of veteran teachers saved me from big blunders.

What I’m concerned about is the way young teachers are used in reform publicity, what they symbolize. The message is not simply the accurate one that we need to attract bright and committed young people to teaching, but that the new and the alternative will save our schools.

In what other profession would such an appeal be made? Can you imagine proposals to staff hospitals with biology majors or the courts with pre-law graduates?

Merit pay could be related to experience, though many merit pay schemes link pay to test scores. The original Race to the Top proposal did mention professional development and career trajectories, though I haven’t read much more since. This cult of the new is interwoven with the reformers’ attempts to remove seniority and to not consider teachers’ academic credentials. However these issues play out in management-union negotiations, reformers are going to have to develop ways to draw on experience and expertise, not with add-on rewards but as central to the reform enterprise.

Don’t Downplay Poverty. Low socioeconomic status does not condemn a child to low achievement. This fact has led some reformers to downplay – and in some cases dismiss – the harmful effect poverty can have on the lives of children in school. To raise the issue of poverty is to risk being accused of making excuses or of harboring “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

I grew up poor and have worked a fair amount of my life with low-income students. To be poor affects everything from health to housing – which weighs mightily on children. There is also the extraordinary gap in educational resources. While a poor kid is trying to work through an outdated textbook at the kitchen table, his affluent peer across town is being tutored in algebra in her own room. Only someone who hasn’t been poor could say that all this can be overcome by school. It is telling that The Harlem Children’s Zone, a rightfully celebrated crown jewel of reform, incorporates health and social services with schooling.

Reformers slip into either/or thinking here. They are right to insist that schools provide poor kids with a top-flight education, but to insist on excellence does not require negating the brutal realities of being poor in America.

If education involves children’s psychological and social as well as cognitive well-being, then we have to address poverty, and the reformers have an unprecedented bully pulpit from which to do it. Wealth and income gaps are widening in the U.S., and no less a figure than Warren Buffet observed that we’re in the middle of class warfare, and the rich are winning.

19 comments:

I am always amazed at how trenchant your comments are. You have, once again, identified precisely what the dynamic is at present in educational reform. As one who is trying to train and inspire good teachers, I find the times very discouraging. I feel I have to keep emphasizing that, even though the word on the street is that teachers are incompetent etc, teachers really are not as a whole doing a bad job and that teaching really is a worthwhile profession.

I just wanted to say thank you for your insightful commentary. I have been teaching for the past ten years in both elementary and secondary schools and as a reform-oriented teacher who is foremost interested in the culture of respect and collaboration at schools as a key component of change, I find the trends in the official "reform" narrative quite Orwellian.

I read your comments recently and was taken by your statements that you are reform-minded but not interested in the pseudo-reform of RTTT. As a school board member I am interested in your ideas as to how to collaborate with teachers in our district to improve the curriculum and the district. I am NYScribbler on the Bridging Differences blog and often comment on Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meiers' discussions there. Thanks.

Many in the current reform movement who screech about the crisis in American education, accompany their statements with nostalgia about the days when education was good, often beginning with, "When I went to school..." I wonder how old these people could possibly be. In the 1930s the Great Depression closed thousands of schools and less than half of the school-aged population attended regularly. In the 1940s nearly a hundred thousand teachers left the profession for better paying jobs in the war industries and in the poorer states, even a high school diploma was not required for a person to work as a teacher. In a 1956 ad for his presidential campaign, Adlai Stevenson spoke ominously of the crisis in education. And I remember the frenzy of fear about the state of education that happened after the launching of Sputnik in 1957. In the 60s there was hand-wringing about the failure of schools to prepare our students for the technological age. When I entered teaching in the 70's Silberman's Crisis in the Classroom made it clear that America’s teachers were ineffective compared to the rest of the industrial world. As you note, the 80’s gave us A Nation at Risk. And as Rhee and Klein state, we have continued to go downhill since then; a hill which, apparently, has no bottom.I’m afraid that your call for a rational approach to school reform will be profoundly ignored by those whose only interest in the issue is that the creation and manipulation of fear in the general populace will allow them to gain power. Excuse my cynicism, but those who back Klein/Rhee and the other “reformers” are primarily interested in breaking unions, gaining total control over workers and lining their own pockets.

1) the youth entering first grade usually takes 12 years to finish 12th grade. Any reform effort needs to find a way to provide consistent teaching and learning support for each student for that long. If we change theories every three to four years that means at least three different types of teaching for every child.

2) use maps to help reinforce your points about poverty. GIS maps can be created to show where poverty is most concentrated in a city/state. Overlays can show where poorly performing schools are located See example at http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com

Combining this idea of logevity, with the spatial tools of maps, shows that we need to have long-term strategies that apply extra resources in many locations where the impact of poverty is greatest.

Mike- I am writing in response to your blog post, “The threats to school reform are within its own program”. I was happy that you chose the topic you did because I think that our current public school system is in need of change, but those who are setting the goals for that change seem very out of touch and detached from the actual classroom.

I strongly agree with the information you provided about “Cleaning House”. I am from the Detroit area, and while I did not attend Detroit Public Schools, I read about the struggles and problems DPS faces on a daily basis. The idea of completely starting over with the school system and structure in Detroit has been mentioned many times in conversations I have had with people. They often say things like, “There is no hope for that school district. Robert Bobb needs to fire everyone and just start over”. In fact, this is what many say about the city in general. Therefore, when you said, “In even the most beleaguered school district there are good teachers and administrators, and their skills and local wisdom are tossed out in the clean sweep… though it is tedious and calls for great skill, a more targeted and discriminating approach that builds on what is good has a better chance of long-term success”, it made me think of DPS. The school district may be struggling and so is the community around it, but there are great teachers and great administrators in this school system, and they need to be recognized.

Secondly, your argument about the reforms coming from the top, and the opinion of America’s public school system from those who are not in the classroom everyday reminded me of a quote from your book, “Why School?”- “It is easy to lose sight of the broader purpose and grand vision of the common public school. For me, that vision is manifest in the everyday detail of the classrooms, the words and gestures of a good teacher, the looks on the faces of students thinking their way through a problem” (153). I appreciate that you stress the importance of the small details that take place in a classroom because a student’s ability and desire to learn cannot be measured by test scores or government mandated surveys, but rather the small, yet moving, moments when a teacher is able to foster leaning from his or her students. Some of the best moments are when a student masters a topic that he or she struggled with and the resilience and hope that so many teachers show for their students.

I was wondering if you had any further information for teachers who are working in more diverse and economically poor areas? How do we, as educators, provide students with the ability to learn and have the same opportunities as students from more affluent areas?

It is astounding to me that we, as aspiring English teachers, so often forget the power of words, or neglect the potentially devastating impact that rhetoric can have on students or communities. Words are often what have inspired us to teach; words are what have moved us to share knowledge with others; words are valued by us as they are by a select number of people on Earth. They are how we make sense of things, and how we share our newfound sense with those around us in the hopes of somehow improving their lives.

So that we let words such as “remedial” and “failing” (and all that their connotations imply) replace words such as “in need of help” and “struggling” doesn’t make sense at all. That students allow such turns of phrase as “we’re too stupid” and “it doesn’t matter” to dictate their own actions suggests that perhaps the example we’re setting is one that should not be set. Words have more power than we realize. Regardless of old aphorisms, there are many school districts that could better survive the onslaught of sticks and stones than an attack by soldiers armored in letters that spell out “failure to achieve appropriate standardized test scores,” “failure to meet No Child Left Behind standards,” or “denial of excess funding.” Accusatory, ugly words.

That “we need an expanded vocabulary, adequate to both the daily joy and the daily sorrow of our public schools,” (152) is something we cannot question when we witness such abrasiveness.

It is as vital that reform is not seen as an attempt to destroy a “bad” system as it is that reform becomes an attempt to integrate what was “good” in an older system into a more stable construct. It is essential that students and institutions don’t feel the need to defend themselves from change based on rhetoric that is brash or misleading. But most of all, it is imperative that when we describe a school environment that is somehow less than what we’d hoped it would be, we choose words that are as helpful as they are hopeful. “Definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful.” ~Taylor Mali.

Words gave us the sense to teach. Isn’t it only fair that we treat them just as respectfully?

I am a student studying at Michigan State University, and my class and I recently finished your book Why School in one of our English Education courses. We have had many discussions on the topics that you've focused on in your blog post, specifically around the language we as a society use in addressing issues of education. Personally, I found your discussion on the experience of teachers in schools very interesting, particularly when you say "The message is not simply the accurate one that we need to attract bright and committed young people to teaching, but that the new and the alternative will save our schools.", because of the implications this will have on both me and my cohort of future teachers. Even though I represent this willing, inexperienced teacher you want to be cautious of, I agree with your statement. I believe this relates well to a quote from Chapter 4 in Why School, when you bring up the point "as a teacher all my adult life, I can't help but be bothered by the familiar implication that anyone can teach" (55); although education needs to see the reforms and advances you mention both here in your blog, as well as in Why School, I agree that ignoring veteran teachers’ advice and input in the situation in favor of seemingly “fresh” outlooks can also be dangerous.

However, I know that I, and many of my peers, have experienced first-hand how disheartening this “experienced” input can be. All of the students in my class have attended field-placements during our time at University, and many of us have had less than enthusiastic encounters with seasoned teachers: tales of woe, sorrow and heartache for students; a harsh outlook on their district and its shortcomings; the pressure to teach to the standards; the frustration of monotony in the classroom, and the list goes on. I think it is all too often that we as young teachers are already tainted by the outlook of teachers who have been run into the ground. From your response, then, I think we need to see a balanced mix of “fresh-outlook” enthusiasm from my cohort of blossoming teachers, as well as the wisdom and advice from teachers who have experienced many years in the classroom.

In response to your blog post, “The Threats to School Reform…are within its own program,” I would like to comment on your idea that instruction needs to be the primary focus in reform. You mention that “instruction is the gigantic missing element in reform, and without it, all the structural changes in the world won’t get us very far.” This is one of the, if not the single most important, reasons our education reform has fallen short. The people pushing so strongly toward change are focusing on the structure, policies, and test scores in our schools rather than the actual learning taking place in our classrooms. In your book, “Why School,” you go even further into this discussion. “Teaching and learning are not simply a management problem. Reformers need to incorporate rather than disregard the rich wisdom of the classroom, for the history of policy failure is littered with cases where local knowledge and circumstance were ignored” (58). What goes on in the classrooms in terms of teaching and student thinking is the aspect of education that needs to be reevaluated. We’ve become a nation based entirely on standards, from "reading levels" to the indelible standardized tests. It seems that learning has taken a backseat to memorization, and to a seemingly factory-like production. By reestablishing improving classroom goings-on as the primary way to better our educational system, we are intelligibly stating that intellectual learning and engagement is more important to us than is forming a more rigid system.

It is this precise approach that you seem to emphasize, and it is this approach that is so refreshing to hear as I enter into a career as a secondary educator. Going through my college education courses, I’ve heard all about the attempt to reform our schools from a policy and a competitive standpoint. I’ve heard the horror stories of urban school districts, and I’ve experienced some of them firsthand. But to devalue the work that actually takes place inside the classroom, and to place the effort of reform on another aspect of schooling, is a mistake that will lead us nowhere in terms of changing our system. We need to focus on what goes on between the teacher and the students, and the ways we can better foster intellectual learning in the classroom. I really appreciate your stance on the topic, and I can’t tell you how impactful it is to see such a voice through your blog, so thank you.

In response to your blog post, “The Threats to School Reform…are within its own program,” I would like to comment on your idea that instruction needs to be the primary focus in reform. You mention that “instruction is the gigantic missing element in reform, and without it, all the structural changes in the world won’t get us very far.” This is one of the, if not the single most important, reasons our education reform has fallen short. The people pushing so strongly toward change are focusing on the structure, policies, and test scores in our schools rather than the actual learning taking place in our classrooms. In your book, “Why School,” you go even further into this discussion. “Teaching and learning are not simply a management problem. Reformers need to incorporate rather than disregard the rich wisdom of the classroom, for the history of policy failure is littered with cases where local knowledge and circumstance were ignored” (58). What goes on in the classrooms in terms of teaching and student thinking is the aspect of education that needs to be reevaluated. We’ve become a nation based entirely on standards, from "reading levels" to the indelible standardized tests. It seems that learning has taken a backseat to memorization, and to a seemingly factory-like production. By reestablishing improving classroom goings-on as the primary way to better our educational system, we are intelligibly stating that intellectual learning and engagement is more important to us than is forming a more rigid system. ...

It is this precise approach that you seem to emphasize, and it is this approach that is so refreshing to hear as I enter into a career as a secondary educator. Going through my college education courses, I’ve heard all about the attempt to reform our schools from a policy and a competitive standpoint. I’ve heard the horror stories of urban school districts, and I’ve experienced some of them firsthand. But to devalue the work that actually takes place inside the classroom, and to place the effort of reform on another aspect of schooling, is a mistake that will lead us nowhere in terms of changing our system. We need to focus on what goes on between the teacher and the students, and the ways we can better foster intellectual learning in the classroom. I really appreciate your stance on the topic, and I can’t tell you how impactful it is to see such a voice through your blog, so thank you.

I would like to propose an additional threat to school reform. Molly, an education student, who made a comment below says that she and her cohort have all met veteran teachers who have been "run into the ground." As a 49 year old teacher, who has loved my profession and my students throughout my career, I am currently feeling "run into the ground." Even though I believe strongly that continuous improvement is necessary, I wonder why it always seems to mean more work for the teacher. Yesterday I arrived at school at 6 AM and left at 4:45 PM and my work it still not finished. As dedicated nurturers, teachers' first tendency is to put their own needs aside and focus on their students' needs, but is this way of living healthy or sustainable?

I would like to propose an additional threat to school reform. Molly, an education student, who made a comment below says that she and her cohort have all met veteran teachers who have been "run into the ground." As a 49 year old teacher, who has loved my profession and my students throughout my career, I am currently feeling "run into the ground." Even though I believe strongly that continuous improvement is necessary, I wonder why it always seems to mean more work for the teacher. Yesterday I arrived at school at 6 AM and left at 4:45 PM and my work it still not finished. As dedicated nurturers, teachers' first tendency is to put their own needs aside and focus on their students' needs, but is this way of living healthy or sustainable? Sharon

Mike,In this blog you state that "The problem with the big idea approach to school reform is that large-scale educational problems have more that one cause and thus require more than one solution". I agree and would expand on this by saying that both large and small scale educational problems have more that one cause. Implementing one solution to cure problems on a smaller scale as well says that all teachers have one problem and all students have a similar problem that can all be solved with one solution. We're taught all along in pre-service programs that all our students are unique, learn in different ways, and we need differentiated instruction. Then someone comes along and says that, in essence, they're all the same because what they need is one solution. This goes back to the fact that those that are implementing these policies have little to no classroom experience. In their eyes, all students and all teachers are the same; especially in today's society which continually reappropriates discourse about teachers who are dumb, unmotivated, and choose the job for the summers off. We need a new vocabulary about education, and as you say in Why School?, "We need to think in more comprehensive ways about what we want from our schools and how we judge them" (148). However, the problem is that people don't think before they continue to bash teachers and educational institutions, but guaranteed if asked, all those who have these negative attitudes could give a laundry list of things they think education is for. Further, they would all have different ideas about what they woudl want from education, but then it's these same people who support one big solution to solve all of their needs. I'm an English major, which in the eyes of the public means I know nothing about other disciplines (especially math and science), so correct my math if I'm wrong, but a multitude of goals and even more problems can't be solved with one solution. But what would I know, I'm just a teacher, right?-Elizabeth Carlson

First off, I’d like to say that I just finished reading Why School? for an English class I am taking at Michigan State University, and I really enjoyed reading it. As a class, we agreed that pretty much every line in your book is insightful and quote worthy. Kudos.

Secondly, your thoughts on school reform, especially the sections where you talked about “toning down the rhetoric” and “cleaning house” directly coincide with what my class talked about today.

We finished reading Why School? and were participating in a class discussion about which parts we found most interesting. We agreed that the majority of what we hear regarding public schools in the US is negative, although not everything about public schools is negative. When you said that people are “voicing the new common sense” in your blog, it really made me think. Are people really just following the trend and hating on public schools because it’s a popular topic? How could someone who never sent their child to a public school, or doesn’t even have children begin to know what public schools are really like? It seems crazy to me that people really do listen to generalizations, and form their opinions based on them. While yes, there are schooling problems that need to be addressed and there are probably some better solutions than we’ve come up with so far, not every single public school in the US is horrible.

I also like when you said “crisis talk can give rise to action, but heard consistently enough and long enough, such rhetoric can also lead to despair and paralysis”. I agree that we need to be careful about how we say things, because the language of any argument does matter.

As I was reading your blog, my roommate was sitting next to me. I couldn’t help but share with her certain lines, and tell her how this is exactly what my education classes have been talking about. Your words have made a huge impression on me, because this issue is so current. Thank you for sharing your insights with the world via your blog. I’ll probably be reading it quite often from now on.

I first read some of your articles in my college of EDU program at USF and you have really inspired me with your insight. I wrote an essay that I am pretty proud of that is based on your advice of building relationships with students. I will leave you the link and my email if you are interested and have the time to discuss my essay and your opinion of it.